Editorial

This nasen Virtual Issue comprises articles from all three nasen journals, providing a set of 9 papers on the theme 'Working with Parents'. This e-compilation of papers from our three Journals represents a collaborative attempt to celebrate the long-standing engagement between parents and education professionals and services in support of children and young people who experience special educational needs or disabilities (SEND)

Colorado Native Plant Society Newsletter, Vol. 4 No. 5, September-October 1980

https://epublications.regis.edu/aquilegia/1164/thumbnail.jp

Newly qualified Saudi nurses' ability to recognise the deteriorating child in hospital

Background: It is recognized that nurses' failure to recognize and respond promptly to deterioration in children's physiological status can result in increased morbidity and mortality. Aim: The aim of this study was to explore the ability of Saudi-educated, newly qualified nurses, working in paediatric wards, to recognize children's deterioration.Methods: A pilot study was carried out to assess nurses' responses to three clinical vignettes (deteriorating child, improving child and ambiguous scenarios). The nurses' ability to make a correct identification was captured using a 'Think Aloud' approach and quantified using a visual analogue scale. Results: Twenty-seven nurses in two geographical regions in Saudi Arabia participated. Only half the nurses (51·8%) correctly identified the deteriorating child vignette. Of those who could not, 37% were unsure and 11% responded incorrectly. No nurses correctly identified all three vignettes, and four nurses (15%) responded incorrectly to all vignettes. Conclusions: The recognition of the deteriorating child is complex, and even in non-stressful simulated scenarios using vignettes, many newly qualified nurses working with children failed to recognize clear signs of deterioration. A focused (culturally specific) educational intervention is being developed to target this, taking into account Saudi nurses' perceived education and training needs. Relevance to clinical practice: Newly qualified nurses working in paediatric wards frequently find it difficult to identify the deteriorating child

Listening to Women’s Voices: Using an Adapted Photovoice Methodology to Access Their Emotional Responses to Diagnosis and Treatment of Breast Cancer

Introduction: The emotional impact of a diagnosis of breast cancer in women and listening to their affective needs is not widely reported in the literature. Recent policies globally emphasize the importance of incorporating patients’ views in treatment. The aim of the study was to provide insights for health care professionals and make recommendations based on patients’ experiences. Breast cancer survivorship is increasing, but the long-term support needs of such women are less understood. Method: This exploratory study asked 20 white women from 2 urban centers in the UK about their experience of diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer. It used an adaptation of the photovoice methodology to examine a health issue and identify issues of importance and relevance to patients. It recognizes their expertise in their situation. Results: The themes identified were: Fear/Shock; Waiting; Lack of Control; Communication/Practicalities; Body image changes; Specialist versus nonspecialist Centers/Staff; and Ongoing Support. Discussion: The women provided images, with a written summary of their meaning, and discussed them in groups. They identified good practice and suggestions for how to improve the experience of diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Conclusion: The photovoice methodology provides a low-cost, easy to implement a way for patients to provide insight into their experience and contribute their knowledge to improve clinical practice. Visual images and patients’ words allow clinicians to have greater insight into the environment and priorities of patients which could have implications for their response to treatment and long-term care

S-D logic research directions and opportunities: the perspective of systems, camplexity and engeneering

To date, several disciplines have broached the systems view of service and the engineering of service systems. Operations research applied to services began with a rather simplistic, macro view of resource integration in the form of data envelopment analysis (DEA), introduced by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes in 1978 (Banker et al., 1984; Charnes et al., 1994). Micro models of service systems have tended to study the systems’ IT components (Hsu, 2009; Qiu 2009). Engineering, which has always been associated with ‘assembling pieces that work in specific ways’ (Ottino, 2004) and ‘a process of precise composition to achieve a predictable purpose and function’ (Fromm, 2010: 2), has contributed to greater scalability and purposeful control in service systems. However, the agents of the system are usually people whose activities may not easily be controlled by predictable processes and yet are critical aspects of the value-creating system (Ng et al., 2011b). There is need for a new combinative paradigm, such as third-generation activity theory, in which two or more activity systems come into contact, to explore dialogue, exchanging perspectives of multiple actors, resulting in networks or groups of activity systems that are constantly interacting (Marken, 2006; Nardi, 1996, Oliveros et al., 2010). While various systems approaches, such as general systems theory (von Bertalanffy, 1962); open systems theory (Boulding, 1956; Katz and Kahn, 1978); and viable systems approach (Barile, 2008; Beer, 1972; Golinelli, 2010), will not be reviewed here (see Ng et al., 2011a for a systems approach to service science), they share common tenets: boundaries, interfaces, hierarchy, feedback and adaptation to which most systems writers would add emergence, input, output and transformation (Kast and Rosenzweig, 1972). These terms may be used as a basis for a research agenda for the consideration of a service system